New Guggenheim: Art and Architecture as One

By

Ada Louise Huxtable

Updated Jan. 8, 2013 8:21 p.m. ET

Bilbao, Spain

There is no way to miss the new Guggenheim Museum in this northern Basque city; the billowing mass of lustrous, cloudlike forms is the first thing you see against the surrounding green hills. This spectacular European outpost of New York's Guggenheim Museum will open its doors Saturday with a ceremony presided over by the king and queen of Spain and an international A-list of art, social and business world celebrities. Designed by the American architect Frank O. Gehry, the building is more like sculpture than architecture. Its exuberantly curved and canted abstract shapes covered in softly gleaming sheets of silvery titanium are anchored to the earth by warm beige Spanish limestone, their shimmering surfaces changing color magically with the light and weather. Not since Frank Lloyd Wright completed the concrete spiral of the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1959 has an art museum so shocked and intrigued observers or received so much preopening publicity.

A less formal dedication by Basque officials took place on a balmy evening earlier this month; the people of Bilbao streamed across the plaza, down the ceremonial stairs and across the bridge over the Nervion river until late at night. As the crowds moved through and around the extraordinary structure, gilded by the setting sun, it came suddenly and stunningly to life, its eccentricities forgotten.

Everything about the building denies custom and tradition. Its concept and forms are as radical as the contemporary works of art they accommodate. The grand stair descends rather than rises; the broad gentle treads lead down to the entrance on the level of the river and into an immense atrium that soars the building's full 165-foot height. This stunning space is reminiscent of Wright's skylit spiral ramp in New York, except that here the atrium is not enclosed; it is surrounded by curving open walkways offering constantly changing views of the vast interior and glimpses into the galleries at every level. The processional, multidimensional plan expands vision and perception dramatically. The container and the contained, the art and the architecture, are one thing, made for each other; nowhere else do all of the arts support and play off one another in a unified aesthetic that so fully expresses the 20th century. The setting is as significant as the art; the whole is the superb sum of its parts.

The light, from the top and sides, is a luminous glow in the day that turns into a harder, theatrical brilliance at night. Sharply angled steel-and-glass enclosures for stairs and elevators recall early Russian constructivist designs like Tatlin's elaborate unbuilt platforms rising precariously into thin air. Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's "Soft Shuttlecock" drapes its 24-foot-long painted canvas feathers over a stone wall high overhead. There are views of the river and the enclosing hills studded with ornate old buildings. Outside, a pool and pedestrian bridge interact with the river, and at night the pool erupts with blue flames as five "Fire Fountains" by Yves Klein roar into action. The scale is enormous everywhere; this is a place where Jim Dine's three 20-foot-high "Red Spanish Venuses" can feel at home.

With no false modesty, the Guggenheim's director, Thomas Krens, declared from the beginning that the Bilbao museum was to be "the greatest building of the 20th century." It will be a hard act to follow. But if anything could be more impressive than the building, it is the process that brought it into being. Bilbao was once the richest city in Spain; its shipping, mining and banking businesses were prime generators of the country's prosperity until the decline of heavy industry after World War II. Faced with a failing image and economy, its officials have undertaken a series of revitalizing projects. When the vision and determination of a city bent on regeneration of its spirit and resources met the ambitions of a director with a growing collection and dreams of expansion, a bargain was struck with international reverberations.

In a shrewd gamble, the Basque government invited the Guggenheim, already involved in several European ventures, to build in Bilbao. With a background in art, academia and business, Mr. Krens is no stranger to the art of the deal. He negotiated a $320 million package in which the Basques pledged $150 million for a new building, a $100 million subsidy toward operating costs, $50 million for the purchase of new work, and a non-refundable $20 million up front, in case the plans fell through. In exchange, the Guggenheim would retain control, supply the works of art from its collection and provide administrative and curatorial expertise. The completed museum, which replaces old warehouses on what was once a working waterfront, has become Bilbao's dramatic symbol of renewal and bid for an updated economic and cultural base. It is also seen as a way, after civil war, cultural repression and separatist pressures, to reconnect with the international community. The project fulfilled Mr. Krens's desire for a global presence, something that has been sharply criticized by other members of the art world who think the Guggenheim should stay at home. Of the result, he says, "I got everything I ever wanted."

Like it or not, Mr. Krens has written a new chapter in patronage. He is a phenomenon of our time, the director-wheeler-dealer -- a role that has also drawn criticism from the art world, used to more subtle, if no less Machiavellian maneuvering. The collaboration between director and architect on this building has been unique. Most museum directors opt for negative, or "recessive" space; they favor neutrality as an aid to installation. Mr. Krens urged Mr. Gehry to take his place with the other artists; he encouraged the spatial drama of the atrium, the startling shapes and dimensions of the galleries. He has bought art on a grand scale, and commissioned new, site-specific works throughout the museum: a room reconfigured by Sol LeWitt's dazzling color geometry; a Jenny Holzer installation of electronic-sign columns flashing their disturbing messages in a rush of red and blue.

Moreover, Mr. Krens is convinced that the constantly increasing size of much contemporary art makes it virtually impossible to exhibit in normal surroundings, and that to do so diminishes its impact and meaning. When works of art are so large and heavy that they must be moved by forklift truck, when walls and floors must be reinforced to install them, when canvas size is room size, display is a serious problem. He wanted, and got, the largest gallery in the world, 450 feet long by 80 feet wide, with a skylight and flying beams overhead. Richard Serra's "Snake" -- three curving steel walls 104 feet in length and weighing 174 tons -- was commissioned for this space. Robert Morris's walk-in "Labyrinth" and 25-by-33-foot "Aluminum I-Beams Construction" and a floor piece by Carl Andre also fit handily, as does Claes Oldenburg's Brobdingnagian, brilliant-red "Knife Ship," its motorized oars rowing and its knife blades rising and lowering at the gallery's far end.

On one long wall is a series of enormous, predominantly white paintings by Robert Ryman and Andy Warhol and a mirror-finished copper work by Donald Judd, like a polished jewel among them. The passion with which Mr. Krens regards this supergallery and its contents belies his reputation as a cool, detached outsider. More conventional, but still huge galleries, roughly 50 feet square, are devoted to the Guggenheim's classic collection of modern art -- Picasso, Braque, Kandinsky, Brancusi, Leger, Miro -- a roll call of the names recent generations have grown up with.

Mr. Gehry's architecture is as ground-breaking as anything in the museum. With the help of advanced computer technology used to design fighter planes, he has been able to calculate structure, curvature, material and cost so accurately that forms impossible to create and build through traditional methods can now be brought in on budget and on time. But perhaps the major achievement here is an accident of history. It is possible for the first time, as the century ends, to give an overview of 20th-century art, a period of revolutionary creativity and change. Putting a great collection in this perspective, and in this building, as an act of total aesthetic collaboration makes the Bilbao Guggenheim one of the most significant, as well as one of the most beautiful museums in the world today.

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